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Crit­i­cal stages of in­flu­ence

The flight plan Episode 6 6 min read

The short version

All the stages in a crop’s life are critical stages of influence. At each one the plant needs something different, and what it gets decides how the season ends up. Steve builds every program around them, starting from what your market wants. Put the stages on a plan for the shed wall, and time every input to what the plant is doing, not the calendar.

A season’s plan, pinned to the shed wall. The plan on it is an example.

Giving the plant what it needs at each part of the season

Steve builds every program the same way: around the crop’s critical stages of influence. All the stages in a plant’s life are critical stages. At each one the plant needs something different, and it’s critical to understand and respect what it needs then. His programs put it plainly: the right nutrient at the wrong stage does almost as much harm as the wrong nutrient. So a program follows the plant through every stage, from the first to the last.

What are your critical stages?

A poppy grower once asked Steve how much he knew about poppies. Steve told him he didn’t need to know. What are your critical stages? The fundamentals are the same in every crop. Three stages come round in every season:

  • Cell division, when the crop makes the cells its quality is built on. The Cell division windows page has more.
  • Sizing, bulking or filling, when those cells fill up and the yield piles on. The Sizing and bulking page has more.
  • Maturity, when the crop finishes and gets ready to come off. The Maturity page has more.

Each crop names them its own way. In poppies, it’s germination and rosette, stem elongation, flowering and capsule expansion, then maturity. In potatoes, it’s stolon development, cell division, then bulking. In beans, maturity can even be pushed or pulled by a few days, so harvest lands when the machinery is free.

The program builder lays out every stage of the season, one after another, and gives each one what the plant needs then. And in every crop that’s sown or planted, it puts phosphorus first at the start: in many crops, one short of it in its first weeks often never catches up, even when phosphorus reaches it later. It has set itself up for a smaller crop.

Phosphorus.

  • A cut-away of a young maize plant with five healthy mid-green leaves and fibrous roots.

    Phosphorus from the start

    a young maize plant

    phosphorus close to the young roots as the seed’s own store runs out

  • The same maize plant, stunted and dark blue-green, its two oldest leaves purple-red from the tips and edges in, with fewer, shorter roots.

    Short in its first weeks

    the same maize

    stunted and darker green, its old leaves purple

  • A ripe maize cob, its husks peeled back, long and full of golden kernels right out to its tip.

    At harvest

    the cob of the plant with phosphorus from the start

    it set itself up for a full crop

  • A smaller maize cob, shorter and thinner, its tip bare of kernels.

    At harvest

    the cob of the plant short in its first weeks

    phosphorus reached it later, but it had set itself up for a smaller crop

Phosphorus goes first, at the start. A crop short of it in its first weeks often never catches up, even when phosphorus reaches it later: it has set itself up for a smaller crop. An illustration, simplified.

Start from the market

Steve works backwards. “Tell me what your market wants,” he asks. Then he can “reverse engineer that and go all the way back to the front end”: to the stage that sets it. If the market wants even, mid-sized potatoes, the stage that counts is stolon set, and that’s where the program has to be right. It’s the same thinking as on the Recoveries page: count the profit at the packing shed, then find where in the season it’s decided.

A sap test.

  • Three bush bean plants in a row at three stages of one season, cell division (in flower, young pods just set), sizing (long pods filling) and maturity (plump pods ready to pick), with a crate of picked beans at the end of the row.

    Three of the critical stages

    a bean crop, sowing to harvest

    a sap test just ahead of each stage, and the plan worked back from what the market wants

Three of the critical stages that come round in every crop, a sap test ahead of each, and the market at the end, where the plan starts. An illustration, simplified.

The flight plan

The program ends up as a plan for the season: the stages across the season, the days each one runs, the nutrients that matter most at each, and when to take the sap tests. Steve calls it the flight plan. When he showed one to that poppy grower, the grower said it was the first time he understood what he had to do. Before, it had been spray this, spray that, and nothing to do with the plant. He planned to print it big and pin it on the wall, so every morning he could see where he was at.

Stage, not calendar

Seasons don’t keep to dates. A cold start or a hot spell shifts everything. So time every input to what the plant is doing, not to what day it is. The days on the plan are a guide; the plant’s stage is the clock.

  • A small young bean plant, cut away below the ground to show its roots: a few leaves of three leaflets, and no flowers.

    A cold start

    bush beans, day 40, a cold spring

    still in leaf: what’s planned for flowering waits for the flowers

  • A bigger, bushier bean plant in the same soil, with short clusters of small white flowers among its middle leaves.

    A warm start

    the same beans, day 40, a warm spring

    already flowering: what’s planned for flowering is due now

The same day on the plan day 40, in two springs: time each input to the plant’s stage, not the date

The same day on the plan, in two springs: a cold start holds the beans back, and a warm one brings them on. Time each input to the plant’s stage, not the date. An illustration, simplified.

Don’t run out halfway

Cutting the program, Steve says, is like walking up a mountain without any water: you’ll make it halfway, then keel over. Every stage is critical, so there’s no stage where the plant can go without.

The program: one piece for each stage.

  • Five potato plants across one season, left to right: just emerged, young, in flower, full grown, and yellowing at the end.

    Right through

    the program, planting to harvest

    every stage gets what it needs, and the crop goes the distance

  • The same row, the first three plants the same, but the fourth small and wilted, and the fifth collapsed, brown and dry.

    Instead, cut halfway

    the same crop, the program stopped

    it makes it halfway, then keels over

Every stage is critical, so there’s no stage where the plant can go without. Cut the program, and it’s like walking up a mountain without any water: the crop makes it halfway, then keels over. An illustration, simplified.

Where it fits in a program

  • List your crop’s stages, start to finish, in your own words. Every one of them is a critical stage.
  • Beside each one, write what it sets that the market pays for.
  • Sap test through the season, just ahead of each stage where you can, so there’s time to act.
  • Pin the plan where you’ll see it every day. The program builder prints yours for the shed wall.

“It’s understanding those critical stages of influence.”

— Steve, on building a program